Mims, Edwin(1872–1959)
A Vanderbilt University professor and the author of
THEADVANCINGSOUTH.Mims, a professor in the
English department, was a Vanderbilt alumnus and
served as department chair from 1912 through 1942.
ALAINLOCKEreviewed The Advancing South
in the December 1926 issue of OPPORTUNITY.The
book, published by Doubleday, Page & Company,
focused on economic and social conditions in the
American South. Locke praised Mims for his “cau-
tiousness of tact rather than of timidity” and his ef-
forts to provide “an adequate and convincing
portrayal of the progressive and enlightened liberal-
ism which is working out what has been aptly
phrased as the ‘second Reconstruction’ in the
South.” Locke especially endorsed the book to
African Americans. He proposed that Mims’s work
would “broade[n]... their inevitably narrowed vi-
sion of the South” and benefit from “the important
realization that the race problem cannot be isolated
from the other social problems of the Southland,
and that a policy of isolation, either in thought or
public interest of public action, is fatal under the
circumstances of the present generation.”
In 1986 Vanderbilt alumnus Lucius Burch, of
the class of 1934, spearheaded the campaign to es-
tablish the Edwin Mims Professorship, an endowed
chair in English.
Bibliography
Conkin, Paul. Gone with the Ivy: A Biography of Vanderbilt
University.Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
1985.
Mims, Edwin. The Advancing South: Stories of Progress
and Reaction.Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page &
Company, 1926.
“Miss Kenny’s Marriage”Eric Walrond
(1923)
A short story by ERICWALRONDthat was pub-
lished in the September 1923 issue of Smart Set,a
journal that promoted literary modernism and was
edited by George Jean Nathan and H. L. MENCKEN.
Bibliography
Parascandola, Louis, ed. Winds Can Wake Up the Dead:
An Eric Walrond Reader.Detroit: Wayne State Uni-
versity Press, 1998.
Mitchell, Joseph Solon(1891–unknown)
An Alabama-born attorney and playwright,
Mitchell was born in Auburn, Alabama, in August- He was the son of Solon and Elizabeth
Switcher Mitchell. In 1923 he married Lucy Q. B.
Miller, a native of Daytona Beach, Florida. The
couple had a daughter, Laura Mitchell Holland,
and a son, Joseph Mitchell, Jr.
Mitchell’s education included undergraduate
study at Talladega College and law studies at
BOSTONUNIVERSITY. He earned his B.A. in 1913
and an LL.B. in 1917. He began working in the
criminal justice and legal system in BOSTON.He
held positions on the Massachusetts Parole Board
and was assistant attorney general from 1945
through 1949. He was appointed assistant corpo-
rate counsel for the city of Boston in 1950.
An active member of the Republican Party,
Mitchell belonged to several party organizations,
including the Boston Republican club and the Suf-
folk County Republicans. He maintained a mem-
bership in the Boston Bar Association and was the
director and treasurer of the Boston Center for
Adult Education.
He was part of Boston’s active literary circle
during the Harlem Renaissance. He published in
the SATURDAYEVENINGQUILL,a monthly period-
ical produced by the literary society of the same
name, whose members included EUGENE GOR-
DON,FLORIDARUFFIN RIDLEY, and DOROTHY
WEST. Other prominent writers whose work ap-
peared in the Quillincluded WARINGCUNEYand
ALVIRA HAZZARD. Mitchell’s plays Son-Boy
(1928) and HELPWANTED(1929) were published
in the June 1928 and April 1929 issues of the
Quill,respectively.
“Mob Madness”Marion Vera Cuthbert
(1936)
One of several highly evocative works that focused
on LYNCHINGand its devastating effects on Ameri-
can families and society.
Written by MARION VERACUTHBERT and
published in the April 1936 issue of THECRISIS,
the story focuses on Lizzie, a white wife and
mother who is driven to murder in the wake of a
gruesome lynching in her town. Her husband, a
“six-foot red-red-faced” man named Jim, is only348 Mims, Edwin